Journey to Peace Village

Tooling around Hanoi, I've often felt that it really wasn't much bigger than Milwaukee in terms of physical size. For example, going to Hoan Kiem Lake feels like going from about 35th street to the lakefront. Yesterday, one of my students, Thu, printed out a picture of Bar Harbor Maine and was shocked at the width of the roads and the spaces between houses. I told her, yes, this is typical, even in much larger cities.
The other day I checked on Wikipedia--Milwaukee vs. Hanoi and found this is true! However, there's a lot, lot, lot more people! Here's the lowdown:

Milwaukee: population 602,191(city only)
land area: 97 square miles or 251 square km
Hanoi: population: 6,232,940 (metro area)
land area: 71.9 square mies or 186 square km

So there you have it, an area smaller than my hometown, but packed with houses, traffic and people!!!

Labels: Viet Nam and the West

Sorry about the long delay. I've been having Internet problems and time problems--getting enough time to download this stuff.

I recently return from a trip to Lao. My first time in this country. I went to the old capital of Luang Prabong, a city in the north of Lao. It's about an hour flight from Hanoi.

Luang Prabong is a very relaxing and magical city. It's filled with old temples and surrounded by gracious mountains. I had an interesting experience of tutoring some monks at one of the temples. They were all around 20 years old. Most young men in Lao become monks for a short time as part of their education. It was interesting to talk to them because you realize that Buddhist monks are just regular people like anybody else. They have a good sense of humor and many have pretty good English skills.


I'm including a short film I made with highlights of the trip...

Labels: Buddhism, Lao, Travel